Li Bai Drowns While Embracing the Moon
Hey, folks.
To inaugurate this new space, I bring you a poem from a long time ago, which I’m pretty sure isn’t currently available in its finished form elsewhere for free. This came up in conversation the other day, and it’s not speculative, except in that it speculates about literature and history.
Hopefully the formatting is okay. It’s been a struggle! wince
Li Bai drowns while embracing the moon
If Li Bai wrote our greatest human poetry
in lines extravagant of idleness, drunkenness, the cloud-washed moon,
petals on water,
of the sensible industrious women who left him--idle, drunken--
to those petals and that moon...
(some of these things are true)
If Li Bai wrote our greatest human poetry
staggering drunk and idle, if he drowned extravagantly,
and broke the reflection
of the pigeon-colored moon. If ghosty petals--drifting, drunken--
smoothed over his inarticulate corpse...
(one of these things is true)
If Li Bai wrote our greatest human poetry
then made his death extravagant in the sacred gutter Yangtze
a plunge through blossoms,
a mirror that would not bear his weight--still, chill--
and after, those lied who knew it for a suicide...
(all of these things are true)
If Li Bai wrote our greatest human poetry
in chrysanthemum robes falling, falling, all the while falling,
reciting as he fell,
(the neighbors behind their hands said--shitfaced, shiftless--)
then still. Still--
Still.
--Elizabeth Bear
12 September 2008